c64 Releases

Introduction

For me, the C64 was always a machine to code on and the reason for studying
computer science. After playing with the +4 a bit,
I got a C128 and having it — and the ability to program — André (mat) and me
started to code demos. Benjamin (“pumpkin”) joined us some day. Within the years
I was working with the c64, I wrote several demos for the groups “New Order”,
“The Tancard Crew”, and some for “Steve&Star”. Because I have not swapped,
I always was dependent on the group I was working for in order to get my work
brought into the world. This changed after joining with Steve&Star to
“Lower Level”. This was finally real fun…

Update 25.11.2016: Recently
Bugjam/The Dreams sent me some
of my demos I've missed so much. I included them now (“Holy Shit” and “Fantasy”).
Thanks a lot, Hartmut!!!

Update 02.03.2017: After 25 years, I hired to a new crew — Mayday! —
and contributed to another c64 demo. You may find it listed below. Additionally,
some further demos I contributed to — “AT Last / BSM”, “Open Sesame / BSM”, and
“Fast One / TTC”, the latter written by Mat.

Tools

I also wrote some graphic tools for the c64.
Actually, this was the first money I made by programming…
The three tools below were meant to form a complete suite of tools, that's why
they are all named the same. Still, they do different things, of course…
I think the most fascinating thing is the graphics importer which can read
Atari ST images and convert them into hires or multicolour images, and even
FLI-images which is a “format” used by the demo-scene, only possible
by switching the colour source at each scan line…

Games

And well, yes, I also made a game for the C64, “ATA” (All Tetris Arcades),
a Tetris clone.

No, it does not go beyond the original Tetris gameplay. This
was planned for version 2.0.

I found three versions of it on the internet, and, what is interesting about
them is that they demonstrate how the scene was lurking in early 90ies…
The original version contains an intro made by ourselves. The simple reason is
that we had more intros than other things to publish,
so it was an opportunity to include an intro as work-in-a-work.
What is really strange are the both other “releases”, because they talk about
a crack. The software never had something to protect the copyright, so
“cracking” was not necessary, in fact. Still one of the releases even has
two (!) intros.